After nearly 40 hours of travel (and an hour on the ground in Dhaka) we arrived in Kathmandu utterly exhausted. I was so tired that I didn't even bat an eye when they charged me $25 instead of $40 for my visa. We made it through immigration and customs to find Sarita waving with a big smile on her face. The big hug and kiss she gave me made the weariness go away for a bit. She told me that Prem and his family had moved to Pokhara, so I wouldn't be seeing him this trip. Bummer. But we made it across the city to Happy Home Guest House and crashed big time.
The next morning I was looking at my passport and realized that I was only issued a 14 day visa. Shit. But Sarita told me to go ahead and show Krista around and eat some breakfast while she made some calls and figured out what I need to do to get my visa extended. The last thing I wanted was to have my visa expire while I was out on the trek and then be unable to fly back to Kathmandu.
Since we weren't meeting Bogdan and Irene until 10, so Krista and I walked over to Darbur Square. It was really early and thus fairly empty. Except for the birds and cows, there were just a few people milling around and absolutely no westerners except for ourselves. Don't know why, but a calf decided to try to eat my hair. I guess that dry straw look I've got is a hit with the bovines.
On the way back to Themal, I missed a turn on one of the alleys and got us a tiny bit lost. So I hired us a bicycle rickshaw to take us back. But, as I explained to Krista, you can't do Kathmandu without at least one rickshaw ride. Almost as soon as we got back, we saw Bogdan and Irene walking down the street towards us. Yay! So good to finally see them and get the full breakfast special at the Yak.
By the time we got back to Happy Home, Sarita had found out that I could go to a visa office in the city instead of all the way back to the airport. So I got on the back of a motorcycle and one of her employees took me past the royal palace, through some neighborhood, up some steep cobbled road and to the office. The line was long, but Deepak talked to a guy in back who sat me at a table, basically filled out the form for me, took my additional $15, and got me all taken care of in about 20 minutes. We then took off down the cobbled hill and back across town.
I started noticing some not to subtle changes in Kathmandu -- surprising since it had only been 2 years since I was last there. We passed some car dealerships, including one for Land Rover. I saw a few of those air conditioned tour buses on the streets. The scariest change of all for me was that we passed newly opened KFC right next to a newly opened Pizza Hut -- and they weren't those 3rd world fake ones. This was the real thing. The lack of chain restaurants in this city was one of the things I loved most about it in '08! But since these two restaurants were not very near the tourist district, I'm hopeful that they won't make it. We'll see.
Anyway, I arrived back in one piece, took a nap and then met the entire group for the trek (all 5 of us plus our guide) at the trekking office, went over all of our logistics, and had dinner. It was off to bed because we have an 8:30 flight to Lukla tomorrow to start out trek.
The next morning I was looking at my passport and realized that I was only issued a 14 day visa. Shit. But Sarita told me to go ahead and show Krista around and eat some breakfast while she made some calls and figured out what I need to do to get my visa extended. The last thing I wanted was to have my visa expire while I was out on the trek and then be unable to fly back to Kathmandu.
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| Darbur Square, Kathmandu |
On the way back to Themal, I missed a turn on one of the alleys and got us a tiny bit lost. So I hired us a bicycle rickshaw to take us back. But, as I explained to Krista, you can't do Kathmandu without at least one rickshaw ride. Almost as soon as we got back, we saw Bogdan and Irene walking down the street towards us. Yay! So good to finally see them and get the full breakfast special at the Yak.
By the time we got back to Happy Home, Sarita had found out that I could go to a visa office in the city instead of all the way back to the airport. So I got on the back of a motorcycle and one of her employees took me past the royal palace, through some neighborhood, up some steep cobbled road and to the office. The line was long, but Deepak talked to a guy in back who sat me at a table, basically filled out the form for me, took my additional $15, and got me all taken care of in about 20 minutes. We then took off down the cobbled hill and back across town.
I started noticing some not to subtle changes in Kathmandu -- surprising since it had only been 2 years since I was last there. We passed some car dealerships, including one for Land Rover. I saw a few of those air conditioned tour buses on the streets. The scariest change of all for me was that we passed newly opened KFC right next to a newly opened Pizza Hut -- and they weren't those 3rd world fake ones. This was the real thing. The lack of chain restaurants in this city was one of the things I loved most about it in '08! But since these two restaurants were not very near the tourist district, I'm hopeful that they won't make it. We'll see.
Anyway, I arrived back in one piece, took a nap and then met the entire group for the trek (all 5 of us plus our guide) at the trekking office, went over all of our logistics, and had dinner. It was off to bed because we have an 8:30 flight to Lukla tomorrow to start out trek.
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